Harris M. Cooper received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Connecticut in 1975. From 1977 to 2003, he was on the faculty at the University of Missouri. In 2003, he moved to Duke University where he is a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Director of the Program in Education. Dr. Cooper has been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, the University of Oregon, and the Russell Sage Founda¬tion.
Dr. Cooper's research interests follow two paths. The first concerns research synthesis. His book, Synthesizing Research: A Guide for Literature Reviews (1998), is in its third edition. He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Research Synthe¬sis (1994), a volume that is currently being prepared for a second edition. Dr. Cooper and his students have published over two dozen research syntheses, many of which appeared in varied prestigious journals including Psychologi¬cal Bulletin, Review of Educational Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Marketing Research, and Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology. In 2007, Dr. Cooper was the recipient of the Frederick Mosteller Award for Contributions to Research Synthesis Methodology given by the International Campbell Collaboration.
Dr. Cooper is also interested in the application of social and developmental psychology to educational policy issues. In particular, he studies how the activities that children and adolescents engage in when not in school influence their academic achievement. His research synthesis titled Homework (1989) was published as a monograph and provided the evidence base for a guide to policy and practice (The Battle over Homework: Common Ground for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents, 3rd edition, 2007). He and his students recently updated the synthesis of homework research (Review of Educational Research, 2006) and the resulting article received the 2007 Outstanding Review of Research Award from the American Educational Research Association.
Dr. Cooper ´s research on homework has had an impact on policies and practices nationwide. In addition to working directly with schools and school districts, his work has been highlighted frequently in national media. Dr. Cooper has been a guest on NBC Dateline, CBS This Morning, ABC Nightly News and Good Morning America, CNN Headline News, Nickelodeon´s Nick News, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. On radio, he has appeared on The Larry King Show, NPR’s Talk of the Nation and the Mitch Ablom Show. Coverage of his work has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, Readers ´ Digest, and USA Today Weekend, as well as every major metropolitan newspaper. More specialized publications also have provided coverage of his work, including Parents, Parenting, and Child magazines, NEA Today, and The American Teacher.
Dr. Cooper and his students also study the impact of school calendars and calendar variations on students and their families. Their research syntheses on summer learning loss (1996) and modified school calendars (2003) were published in Review of Educational Research. In 2000, their monograph entitled Making the Most of Summer School was published by the Society for Research on Child Development. The monograph reported a synthesis of over 90 evaluations of the effectiveness of summer school.
In 2003, Dr. Cooper became Editor for the Psychological Bulletin and will serve through mid-2009. The Institute for Scientific Information (2006) ranked the Psychological Bulletin 1st among all multidisiciplinary psychology journals with regard to both the number of times it is cited and the impact of articles on their field. It is ranked 5th among all social science journals (n=1768) in total citations and 3rd in impact factor. He has been Associate Editor of Social Psychology of Education, and an Advisory Editor for the Journal of Educa¬tional Psychology, the Personality and Social Psycholo¬gy Bulletin, the Elementary School Journal, Journal of Experimental Education, and the American Educational Research Journal.
Dr. Cooper is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association Divisions 3 and 15 and the American Psychological Society. His research grants include three awards from the National Science Foundation, five from the Department of Education, two from the Russell Sage Foundation, and one each from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In 1984, Dr. Cooper received the first Raymond B. Cattell Early Career Award for Programmatic Research from the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
Dr. Cooper served a three-year term as the Chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri. This academic unit had over 30 regular faculty members and 20 non-regular faculty members and trained over 70 graduate students and 800 undergraduate majors each year. As Director of Duke University’s Program in Education, he oversees teacher licensure programs at both the elementary and secondary level. From 1992 to 1998, he served as an elected member of the Columbia, MO, Board of Education, a school district with a $100 million budget serving 16,000 students. In 1997, he won the AERA Award for Interpretive Scholarship for his article “Speaking Power to Truth: Reflections of an Educational Researcher after Four Years of School Board Service.”
Dr. Cooper served for six years (1999-2005) as the chair of the methods groups for the Campbell Collaboration and as their representative on the Campbell Collaboration International Steering Committee. His national service includes sitting on two committees on afterschool programs for the C.S. Mott Foundation and on the Steering Committee of the National Partnership for Quality Afterschool Programs. He also served on the Steering Committee for the Department of Education’s ERIC Clearinghouses. He was the Chair of the American Psychological Association’s Council of Editors in 2006, chair of its ad hoc Committee on Journal Article Reporting Standards, and is a member of its committee revising the APA Publication Manual. He is on the Steering Committee of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness. In 2007, he was appointed to membership on the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Social Science Evidence in Use. This committee has been charged to give sustained attention to issues and identify actions aimed at promoting high quality social science with an eye toward evidence-informed decision-making.